


Moth

by stalksoftly



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Childhood exploration, M/M, a little smut, a little violence, pyrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 11:36:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9547466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stalksoftly/pseuds/stalksoftly
Summary: Every child plays with fire at some stage. It's easy to let little fingers dart through candle flames. It's fun to hold a match under bits of paper, watch them curl into themselves under blue flames and transform into delicate ashen ghosts. It's curiosity, mostly, it's fresh eyes entranced by the amorphous, the untouchable, the glowing. Most children, though, they grow up. The curiosity fades with age, replaced by indifference. Sometimes, fear.That's the thing about Tyler, though. He doesn't really grow up in the way his peers do; he doesn't try on new hairstyles and turn his old self to cinder. He's always in tune with the tree rings inside him.Tyler can't remember a time where he hasn't been enraptured by the silent pulse of glowing embers.Josh? Josh has fire-engine red hair.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation available <3 ["мотылёк" by ingefaerel](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5257555)

Seven candles pepper the cake his mother made for him. When he leans forward and hushes them with a quick burst of breath, Tyler feels his throat tighten. The charred wicks make Tyler want to cry. 

He feigns sickness for the rest of the day, ignoring the children bouncing through the house, playing with the gifts they brought for him. 

Killing the dancing flames makes him choked and sobbing with guilt. He feels like he crushed a bug or pressed a thumb into his cat's eye, extinguished something vibrant and alive. 

\--

Camping in the woods when summer turns the nights mild is an annual tradition for the Joseph siblings and the neighborhood children. The woods, they're just a dash from their backyards. They're close enough to home and hearth to feel safe, everything around them dark and quiet enough to feel threatening.

Sometimes, a parent patters out to check on them, bringing marshmallows and chocolate and crackers, inspects the ring of rocks around their campfire. With a kiss to one or another child's forehead, they wish them all a good night.

The kids, they huddle around the fire, roast and burn smores. They try to spook each other with flashlights under their chins, recycling scenes from old _Goosebumps_ VHS tapes. Sometimes, Tyler brings his ukulele, and they make up songs about tacos and coconut sharks, clutching tummies, laughter chasing away the unease of the inky darkness all around them.

When his brother and his friends all crawl into their tents with sticky mouths, Tyler always stays up, hunched over the campfire, feeling the skin on his face and crotch of his jeans grow equally tight with heat. 

\-- 

Tyler is every parent's worst nightmare when he sneaks a lighter into his treehouse and plays with the spark wheel until it stutters to life. He's not stupid, he's not young enough to be truly uninformed about the dangers of fire, so he brings a plate with him. A plate and a box of tissues. He pulls out one tissue after another and lights it, watching each one dance and wither into piles of soft ash. 

His fingers are ashy when he reaches into his pajama pants. He paints his own dick black with a paste of ash and precome and stutters his orgasm onto the final throb of orange glow, onto the plate. 

\--

He meets a boy with a pile of wildfire ringlets on his head. 

He meets Josh outside a church function. 

Tyler is out back to still his mind from the chatter. He likes these functions, likes feeling himself a part of the community, but sometimes his head bubbles over and he needs a cigarette break. 

Tyler doesn't actually smoke, never brings himself to adopt the vice. He doesn't drink, so he doesn't smoke. He's not that kind of person. But buying packs and watching them burn, ash dropping off in small crumbling pillars, is enough. More soothing than nicotine, he reasons. 

Another boy joins him when his butt is almost out.

This boy, though, is here for the real deal. He brings a cigarette to his lips and strikes a lighter, cycling smoke out through his nostrils. 

When Tyler catches sight of the smattering of color in his peripheral vision, his head snaps up. He can't tear his eyes away, can't help but drink in the cerise blooming around the boy's pale face. 

He stares and stares, until he feels the ring of embers on his cigarette touch his fingers. He flinches and tosses it to the pavement. 

The boy, Josh, narrows his eyes when Tyler doesn't say anything, just eyes him as he's taking in drag after drag. 

"What are you looking at?" he says finally, voice gruff, eyes still narrowed, face veiled by smoke. His slumped posture and sunken expression says, 'Don't look at me'. His hair, the silver ring lining one nostril, the splash of color down his arm screams, 'Look at me'.

"I like your hair," Tyler sputters, and the boy doesn't smile. His expression remains tired, unimpressed. 

"Everyone does," he says, billowing smoke. 

Tyler's throat tinkles with nervous laughter.

"But there's a lot more to me," he tacks on. 

"What's your name?" Tyler brings himself to ask. 

And Josh leans down to crush the butt under his heel. 

"Josh," he answers, pulling open the door and dipping inside the crowd.

Tyler's chest feels tight when he sees the halo of red disappear among a sea of taller forms.

\--

At the next church function, Tyler doesn't allow himself to indulge in idle gossip or dry hugs from the elderly ladies of his community. He darts behind the pastor, unseen, weaves through bodies until he's outside again.

He chain-lights cigarettes, watching ash drop, tense, poised. 

After an hour and half his carton gone, he starts to curse himself for missing out on the fun inside, for wasting his time waiting for what, exactly? Another glimpse of red hair, another glare?

But the door crashes open, and he gets exactly that. Red hair, ends fading to a lighter wash of pink, and a glare when Josh spots the ring of cigarettes around Tyler's feet. 

"You didn't strike me as a chainsmoker," Josh says, his face relaxing into indifference. He's lighting his own cigarette now. 

"I'm Tyler," Tyler says. 

"I know," Josh says. 

Tyler furrows his brow.

"You sing? At the service sometimes?" Josh says slowly, raising his pitch and shaking his head like he's talking to a fumbling idiot. 

And that's what Tyler feels like, now, dazzled by red hair and Josh's bristling exterior. He feels akin to a moth, a son of Icarus. He can't reign himself in. He wants more, more of whatever is kindling in the pit of his stomach. 

"Let's go out sometime, Josh," Tyler ventures, "Let's… hang out," he adds to soften the blow.

Josh isn't fooled.

"Never pegged you as that kind of guy, either," Josh says, his tone unchanging from before, but with a smile threatening to pull apart his face. 

He motions for the phone in Tyler's breast pocket, and taps out a number. 

\--

Their date isn't quite the kind of date that Tyler remembers going on, occasionally, in high school. They don't go to the movies and laugh nervously while buying popcorn. He's not snaking an arm around delicate shoulders in the dark. He's not palming the legs of jeans to ward off sweat when he's trying to work through a knot in his stomach and go in for a chaste kiss. 

No, their date is an invitation for Tyler to come over and throttle Josh at Mario Kart. Or, Josh invited him to a match and Tyler texted back something about throttling, pummeling, destroying him. 

He doesn't.

Josh lives at home, but his family is out. He notes that when Tyler enters, clammy, like on his previous dates, done-up in a button-up, like on his previous dates. 

Josh invites him onto the sofa and pulls a larger, misshapen cigarette from his pack. He goes to hand it to Tyler, who places his own pack and lighter on the coffee table, but Tyler, not even aware of the contents of the ugly cigarette, shake his head. 

"I don't smoke," he says. 

Josh nods, inferring something different. 

"I can respect that."

Tyler nods, too, but goes to light a cigarette anyway. Josh slides him an empty can of Redbull for him to tap off his ash. A moment of silence passes, uncomfortable due to their unfamiliarity, before Josh leans over to take the cigarette from Tyler's fingers. Tyler allowed it burn to the halfway mark.

"Alright," he says, taking a drag. "Alright, this is one way to look cool, but you don't have to waste it, not when I'm here." Smoke fans around him, from his nostrils and his words. 

Tyler's face crinkles with a smile. "Alright," he says. 

"Can I kiss you?" he hears then, coming from the cloud of smoke. 

"Alright," he says again. 

And Josh brings his face forward to press a kiss, one tasting distinctly of ash, to Tyler's mouth. 

\--

When they move to Josh's bedroom, just in case, just in case, Josh's kisses are delicate, responsive, every lick, every bite warm with intimacy. Tyler doesn't curse himself for waiting for Josh. He doesn't curse himself for getting to know the softie behind the bristling exterior, doesn't curse himself for getting to know the soft waves of Josh's tongue rollig into his mouth. 

They land on the bed as a single unit of limbs tangling, of cold fingers roaming under warm shirts.

When Josh shimmies him out of his jeans and goes down on him, Tyler cards his hands through Josh's hair, and he can't help it, he can't help his hips from bucking when the ringlets sneak between his fingers like motionless flames, when Josh's mouth feels like a hot hearth of velvet around him. 

He comes with sparks rattling his limbs, with flares whiting out the backs of his eyelids. 

Josh cools him with gentle licks, with kisses tasting of ash and spunk. 

"That was really fast," he says, smirking. 

And Tyler's face warms with his returning blood flow. 

\--

For as long as he can remember, fourth of July has been Tyler's favorite holiday. With showers of colored fire flaring up the skies and the comforting smell of gunpowder rolling through the streets, Tyler has always felt dizzy and languid with euphoria on the fourth of July.

Josh strikes a lighter and holds it to the fuse, one hand clamped on the thin wooden pole of a firework. They're leaning out the window, again as a unit, clutching the fireworks Josh bought for Tyler when he picked up on the anticipation in Tyler's voice weeks before the holiday rolled around. Always going on and on about the beauty of fiery blooms erupting in the sky, about the tremor of explosions and the earthy smell. 

So, Josh bought Tyler a couple of small rockets. 

Tyler's hand is clasped around his, Tyler's body is clasped around him, and he mouths Josh's ear and watches the sparks shower around their wrists. 

Josh tries to wiggle his hand free, but Tyler's grip is like a vice. Tyler's eyes are glassy. 

"Tyler," he says, still wiggling.

Tyler says nothing, does nothing, just stares at their clasped hands, at the skittering sparks, at his knuckles turning white over Josh's hand. 

"Tyler, Tyler, let go, let me go!" Josh is frantic now, thrashing, but Tyler is rigid with a dreamy catatonia. The firework shoots from the window sill with a crack, washing a kaleidoscope of colors over the both of them. 

Tyler is knocked backwards by a sharp elbow to his ribs. There's something shrill ringing in his ears, beyond the cry of the explosion. It's a wail, rumbling from deep within Josh.

He pries Tyler's hand away and curls forward, his crescendo dying down.

Tyler reaches out to lay a hand against Josh's stuttering shoulder, to rub, to soothe, but flinches away when he tracks a sticky red handprint over the white fabric of his t-shirt.

"Tyler," he breathes, his entire body vibrating. His voice, always so steady, so strong, is hollow. "Tyler, my finger… I don't… m-my finger." 

He casts a glance over his shoulder, face ghost white. 

He turns his body, clutching his own wrist, a mangled bone dangling where an index finger used to be. 

Tyler turns on his heel and darts out of the room, down the stairs, out the door. He doesn't stop when he reaches the end of the backyard, doesn't stop when he's crashing through foliage in the dark. He stops when his lungs give out and his stomach lurches. Firecrackers still going all around him in the sky, he heaves bile. 

All Tyler can smell is gasoline on his hands. 

\--

Tyler ignores the calls, the texts. 

He deletes the pictures Josh sends him, of himself before white walls, clutching a bandaged hand, derisive smile on his face. He ignores, "I'm going to lose the finger." He ignores the texts about surgery. He ignores the texts about the success of surgery. He especially ignores the calls from Ashley.

And when the previews of Josh's messages start to hint impatience, anger, disappointment, pictures of a purple gash held taunt by black wire, rimmed with leaking skin, he turns off his phone altogether. 

He kneels in front of the bathtub for hours, knees bruised with the outline of tiles, lighting cigarettes, kissing the end of one stub to the tip of the next, watching the tiny ring of orange move leisurely down the paper, and go out altogether when he drops each stub into the water, filters bloating like tiny corpses. 

When he's done with a carton, he moves on to matches, until he's out entirely, and he climbs into the greying water, feeling himself purified from steeping in his favorite tea.

He's half-hard and he tries to work with it, tries to find some solace and distraction in an orgasm, but when he shuts his eyes and stutters his hips into his fist, all he can see is red, red, red, not red hot glowing heat, but fire-engine red hair, red rusty handprints. 

When he goes to rinse himself off, he chooses to break off his arousal altogether with a cold spray of water.

Tyler's phone stays off, Tyler goes back to work. Tyler douses himself with cold water when he feels himself ignited. He tosses out old lighters, saving only the shell of his pink Zippo. He burns all his matches and doesn't buy more. Josh's cigarettes, abandoned on the coffee table, he locks them away in the medicine cabinet. He doesn't cook over an open flame, opting for cold leftovers from the restaurant. 

Tyler still can't get the smell of gasoline off his hands. 

\--

Tyler goes to church functions; he can't avoid them, not really, not with his entire family going, with him always enthusiastic about them in the past. And really, he wants to go, but he doesn't sneak out the back to not-smoke anymore. He crowds himself within a shield of friends, keeps his laughter low, tucks himself low, too. 

His efforts turn out to be futile when a heavy grip pulls him out of a conversation, through the crowd and out the back door. 

A little too roughly, hands push him against the stucco of the building. 

"Tyler, what the fuck is wrong with you?" 

Josh's voice is gentler than his hands. 

Tyler can already feel it welling up inside him; the opposite of fire, a dam threatening to break over his cheeks. He doesn't dare to speak, doesn't allow himself to weaken it. 

Josh's grip loosens, but his expression is unrelentingly torrid. 

"What's your deal?" he spits, "What the fuck? Why haven't you answered any of my texts? Do you care? Do you know what I went through?"

Tyler flinches away when Josh reaches his hands out again. 

"What, are you disgusted by me now?"

Tyler's efforts are futile, and the first currents roll down his face, dripping onto the white of his dress shirt. 

"You… can you help me?" 

Josh purses his lips and makes a point: "You really want me to help you out after you left me to bleed out in my bedroom with a missing fucking finger?"

Tyler can't argue with that, so he pleads. 

\--

Well into young adulthood, Tyler clings to the nostalgia of hazy afternoon bike rides with his brother, the cards in his spokes sending out a love song to the chattering cicadas in the trees. 

When he leaves for college, he places a tender kiss farewell to the inside of the rotting walls on his treehouse.

He clings to the purity of his childhood so tightly that coarse language never sullies his tongue. 

All it takes is a play on words or a guitar turned up-right, seesawed with a bow, to send laughter skittering out of him, sounding like a marble bouncing across tile. 

Tyler doesn't really grow up, doesn't turn his older selves to cinder, so he can't remember a time where he hasn't been enraptured by the silent pulse of glowing embers. 

So he decides to burn this young, endlessly curious part of himself to the ground.

Josh hands him the canister of gasoline, and Tyler splashes it around the walls of his childhood treehouse, paints the rotting wood a darker shade. When his work is done and his hands really do smell sharp and tainted, he hops down the ladder and grabs a lighter from Josh. 

He lets it tickle the end of a rag and tosses it up into the tiny house, crooked and crafted with love by his father, a homestead of his childhood memories with his friends, with his lighter, with his first amorous explorations. 

The flames engulf the tiny structure, singeing off leaves and branches with it. 

Tyler's face, only his face, feels tight with heat as he watches the flames furl around everything, charring planks and branches, breaking them apart. 

Tyler grabs Josh's hand, the bad hand, the hand he ruined because he was so fixated on the beauty of the sparks, the beauty in the destruction, until it really did destroy something dear to him. 

He places a kiss to the pink scar and can't help but feel his face crumple again. 

"I'm so sorry," he says, lips against the gap in Josh's hands, opening bleary eyes, and Josh's face is soft, so soft, flashing from red to blue, red to blue like a flame. 

He barely hears Josh's voice over the shrieking of the sirens. 

"It's okay."

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about pyromania and ended up writing about pyrophilia. Whoopsie. 
> 
> Sorry there's not more smut. 
> 
> This concept is kind of weird, but let me know if you liked this.  
> <3


End file.
